Mr. Sullivan
English 50
Essay #2
2 April 2013
Terrorism
Connie Schultz author of the article New Airport Policy: Grin and Bare It, Schultz says “Not exactly secret agent man.” when referring to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the underwear bomber. Because she says that he isn’t exactly a secret agent, even though he still had the potential to be dangerous, rather than something more adequate for a terrorist shows that Schultz is not too concerned with terrorist threats happening domestically. People are not concerned enough with terrorism if it is not affecting them directly. In the United States people are not worried about terrorist attacks because it does not affect them. On September 11, 2001 was the day that our concern for terrorism was at their highest. Not that the attack affected us individually but as a country because a foreign terrorist group was able to get pass American borders and kill about 3,000 people. Since the attacks on the World Trade Center people in America have little worry about domestic terrorist. Although there have been terrorist attacks in the United States since 9/11 none have come close to matching its death toll or degree of publicity.
Another reason for the low concern of Americans towards terrorism would be that all recent terrorist attacks in the United States have either failed or been thwarted. For example on January 17, 2011 a pipe bomb was discovered along the route that the Martin Luther King Jr. parade was going to take in Spokane, Washington. Had it gone without detection the bomb would have caused multiple casualties, fortunately the terrorist attack was thwarted and no one was injured. Another example is the underwear bomber, although the incident did raise some concerns, it did not achieve enough publicity to increase nationwide concerns. In addition to the capture of Abdulmutallab they were also able to acquire his bomb which failed to explode. In acquiring his bomb government officials are able to